Under the Microscope, Some Things Look Too Crazy to Be Real

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Under the Microscope, Some Things Look Too Crazy to Be Real

Physicists wonder if there are other universes, but biologists have already found them. Just look through a microscope and there you are, in a different world of life.
Igor Siwanowicz, a neurobiologist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus, visits often. Acclaimed for his macroscopic photography of insects (like the jumping spider above) and other small animals, he uses microscopes to explore ever-smaller realms.
"I first laid hands on my microscope only three years ago, when I changed fields," said Siwanowicz. "I used to work as a biochemist, but I decided that neurobiology was more in tune with my naturalist approach. Plus they have these cool toys: confocal laser-scanning microscopes."
On the following pages, Siwanowicz takes Wired on a tour of some of his best work.

Slug moth caterpillar

After years of heavy-duty macroscopic photography, Siwanowicz has found himself spending more time using his microscope as a camera. It's not just any old microscope: It's a a confocal laser-scanning microscope, which takes multiple photographs at different levels of focus, then reconstructs them into a single, high-resolution, depth-enhanced image.

Oak lace bug

For Siwanowicz, photography became more than a hobby during the stressful years of his doctoral studies in crystallography. "You need creative outlets," he said. "Especially photography, where the magic happens in a split second where you press the shutter. You're not dwelling in the past, or thinking about the future. You're in the moment. It was very therapeutic for me."

Dragonfly thorax

As part of neurobiologist Anthony Leonardo's team at HHMI, Siwanowicz studies the anatomy of dragonflies. Lately he's focused on proprioceptors -- sensors that coordinate balance and spatial orientation, like the inner-ear vestibular system of mammals -- in dragonfly necks.
"They're totally fascinating," Siwanowicz said. "They have this huge head that rests on this one point, and those sensors communicate directly to wing and abdomen muscles. It's stabilized inertia. That direct neck-to-abdomen link hadn't been found before. I'm finding something new every other week."

Juncus leaf cross-section

Colors in the photographs are produced by fluorescent dyes used to illuminate microscopic samples. The dyes are not true-color, but neither are the colorations arbitrary: Different dyes bind with different material structures, so that the resulting coloration patterns reflect the composition of samples.
In this cross-section of a Juncus rush leaf, red dye has adhered to chloroplasts, cellular structures that produce sugars. Blues and greens have attached themselves to cellulose.

Sycamore lace bug

Arthropod skeletons have a composition similar to cellulose, and dyes bind to them in similar ways. Variations in protein fiber configuration produce variations in color.

Bladderwort

Sometimes Siwanowicz's job and his craft go hand-in-hand: The bladderwort above was collected in the same pond where his research group has been studying the flight dynamics of dragonflies.
Bladderworts are carnivorous plants, and their food-trapping mechanism involves one of the plant world's fastest motions. Attached to hairs outside the mouth of this bladderwort are algae: two long-tailed bulbochaetes and an indented-square-shaped desmid.

Desmids

"They have these very intricate shapes," said Siwanowicz of the desmids he's found inside bladderworts, and magnified even further. "From the outside, they look to me like little bits of technology."

Dog tick mouthparts

Siwanowicz enters each session of microscopic photography with an intended image in mind, but the process is inevitably one of discovery, too. "You never know what you're going to get as a final product," he said. "I was so surprised that the mouth parts of ticks have such vibrant colors under the microscope."

Fern sporangia

Part of a series that ended up producing last year's third-place Olympus Bioscapes contest photo, this image of a fern common fern shows its spore-enclosing sporangia, which are in turn covered by protective hairs called paraphyses.

Jumping spider eyes

Fascinated by microscopes and imaging technologies, Siwanowicz has deep appreciation for the eyes of jumping spiders, which he describes as "a fantastic engineering solution."
Their many eyes -- each individual has four pairs -- are extremely powerful. Like telephotos on cameras, they're capable of great magnification. Their field of view, however, is very narrow, and the lenses are part of the spiders' exoskeletons. They can't be moved unless the spider moves its entire body.
To compensate, the spiders' retinas are mobile, adjusting position in relation to their lenses and scanning the incoming projection from different angles. "Under magnification, you can see when they're looking at you," said Siwanowicz. "They're not moving, but their eyes are turning black. The retinas are absorbing all the light. They're looking right at you."